What It IS All About

I wish to thank all of you who have IM'd me their thanks for bringing this situation to light. From those in the group, to my friends and to complete strangers, it lifted my spirits and and bolstered my resolve to pursue some sort of justice for this issue.

No one ever said that ANY of us HAD to like any of the 3 designers hosting the competition. Their ability to be personable as an AV was not required, though I suspect was expected by most of us. hy and Calico managed to be honest, sweet and supportive. Not so Simone.

All three make their living earning SL Lindens converted to RL dollars. The models earn just clothing. Once drawn, it costs nothing to reproduce that blouse, dress, hairdoo, there are no manufacturing runs, bolts of cloth to be ordered, etc. None of the RL issues of merchandise production.

Once launched a piece of clothing, or whatever is created, is pure profit. Stick a pic in a vendor ... cha ching!

What does cost is advertising your place of business. In SL traffic equates to money. The more traffic your area has, the more likely it comes to the top of a search of Places. Since people have a tendency to go to the more high trafficed areas they find, being up in the seach food chain is much sought after.

Simone told me that when models's events were not going on her store was dead., traffic practically nil. The many times I popped into the store NOT during a scheduled event I saw an average of 3-5 customers wandering the aisles.

With the models there during the events by virture of forced attendance, the traffic numbers went up and so did her search ranking. So visa vi our work, our TIME, in some cases our real dollar investment, traffic was raised for Simone.

Models became promoters, event coordinators and campers for Simone. And finally UNPAID promoters, event coordinators and campers for Simone.

The models were there to promote Simone! Design, not to merely model in shoots and on the catwalk, but to devote many hours in organizing weekly events. Promotion, inception, design, attending. This involved the TIME and money needed for artwork for posters and event props, building, buying of or creation of them. Time out of the models lives and game time, money out of their virtual pockets and RL credit cards, to receive digital goods that cost the designers nothing, or as in the case I have brought to the public eye, NOT RECIEIVING DIGITAL GOODS they were entitled to.

Personally, I am lucky that I don't have to give a hoot about the actual real world cash outlay from day 1 of this competition to it's dissolution last week, it is really a minor annoyance in the big picture of things.

What I will never be able to get back is the TIME that I and so many other models gave to this "exercise in futility".

TIME = life.

Over 4 months of our collective gaming TIME, which is a considerable amount of TIME to freely give to someone making Linden and real world dollars/money off me and many others. This TIME involved 90 models, then later dwindling down to 62 models giving their TIME, their dedication. Sustaining through the stress to continue to put out day after day, week after week.

For what?

Nothing?

Clothing was started to be withheld until she could weed out the "dead weight". Then it just became "No!!!" when asked if she would be distributing the releases.

Is this fair?

Is this living up to the competition?

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

I do not care if you are a Simone fan or hate her guts. I do not care if you love her clothes or hate them. I do not care if you think I suck for writing about this.

What I do care about is the fair and equitable treatment of the 90 models of the competition she started and ended.

I do care that these 90 models invested their TIME, money and considerable in game and real world collective talents to earn real US DOLLARS for Simone who in turn could not even give these models a digital texture map to adorn their avatars with.